You might be right. My personal preference is to always compare across vendors EXCEPT for things like pu'er or sencha where a single vendor often has lots of variety within subgroups.

I also didn't want to get into asking for a discount from anyone BUT since you brought it up... Yea a sale would be nice. You figure we'll probably get 10 people than actually commit. Maybe 15g samples x 5 is 75g per person x 10 = 750g of tea.

Or maybe pool to buy a super fancy bing and split? Not sure but as long as I get to sample tea, discuses and save a bit of money I'll be happy.

I think it would be neat to have us all taste the same teas and discuss. TeaChat has something called OTTI (official taste testing initiative) which I've participated a couple of times and really enjoyed.

I've been trying lots of yancha and would like other people's detailed tastings notes of all the popular offerings(eg Yunnan Sourcing's TieLuoHan) and not so popular choices.

This is how I would see it working:

1: We post a thread to vote on what tea we wil taste. It has to be specific like "longjing" or something or "bulang pu'er" or even have a game like "plantation vs old arber sheng".

2: Once we decide on a tea we will pick 5 vendors. Participants can choose 1 or all 5 to taste.

3: It may be cheaper for a single person to order all the tea and then parcel it out to participants. However having other people handle your tea may be something we may just want to skip out on and everyone order whatever they want.

4: start a sticky thread to discuss the tasting! Let the thread be sticky for a few weeks and then let it go away.

Think of tea like beef. Some beef is better suited to be grinded up and made into a burger. Other cuts of beef are eaten as steak. You can grind up a steak to get a burger or perhaps you simply prefer burgers to steak ;) The good thing is that if you prefer burgers to steak you don't need to spend 50 USD to get a good cut of meat!

I drive from around Fairfield, CT to Greenwich, CT and my commute routinely hits 90 minutes if I don't leave early enough. That's half the distance to midtown. Driving from Milford to NYC would be insane.

TTES #18 is so-called Ruby Red, Hong Yu, 紅玉紅茶. That Yuchi Wild tea I mentioned is from Taiwan ;) In general it seems there are more experimental red teas easily accessible from Taiwan than anymore else. I quite like all these weird hybrids.

No he's from Fujian. My friend sources tea from Wuyi. She visits the area twice a year and has long made friends in the area and not just "tea" connections. I think the two are related :-p but I don't know much about her visits. She spent some time at a temple and befriended one of the monks. He gave her some tea and she loved it. He saves a batch for her on the condition that she not sell it! She shares it at her shop. If I remember the tea bushes are not part of any farm. They are just bushes/trees that have always been around the temple so I guess that makes time "wild".

However she accepts donations for the temple. I'm not sure how it all works... But those wild red teas are awesome! I have some "wild yuchi red tea" that I love. The other Taiwanese red teas I have found are too sterile. I find TTES #18 to be quite boring honestly. It's a very nice tea :-p but other people really seem to love it.

In a similar vein the monk that makes the tea I like is not standing on his head on the top of a mountain when he makes his tea. He's just a monk at a temple. A normal guy with friends, problems and a day-to-day life like everyone else.

If it's one thing I try to explain to people is that tea is a current, modern ongoing thing! For whatever reason people think all tea is made by monks(ninjas???) instead average people that are making a living. Some of those people are quite passionate some are not. The closest thing I can compare it to is beer. Yes the Vikings drank beer and yes we can connect beer to all kinds of lore of myths but beer in and of itself is a contemporary product. People wake up and go to work making beer. Parents pass down business on their kids or sell them. Market forces greatly affect everything!

PS. I am aware that some tea is indeed made by monks the same way some beer is made by monks(eg genuine Trappist beers). My favorite red tea is a wild red tea made by a monk ;)

I thought I was looking at /r/mildlyinteresting I love that sub! That 茶character is also wildly uncentered. I remember sometimes having books that were 4 color printed (CMYK) missing one of the color. I wonder if this was just a dry spot in the ink or something...

I wish we can weigh votes on image posts posts 0.1 relative to other posts. Most of the good content comes from self posts and sometimes discussions from blog posts. I personally prefer subs that only allow self posts (eg /r/gamedev ) since better content seems to float to the top. However /r/tea doesn't have enough submissions as whole where I think it will make a difference.

Boil a couple of times and let it sit with the lid open it may just go away after 2 weeks. You can also throw a handful if spent tea leaves while it boils. I've heard of people using spent, sheng pu'er no matter the kind of tea they ultimate pair with the pot.

I had a lot that smelled of cloves and after using the pot a bit it went away after 2 weeks. It's not the case that the pot acquired a new smell that masks the old.
The pot just smelled neutral now.

How do you brew this? I've had a few Muzha TGY and I LOVE the way they smell. Getting all of that goodness into the brew has been challenging. With slightly aged examples, I find really long brews actually are more to my liking than the typical fast gong-fun style brews. I think I will my 1995 Muzha tomorrow ;)